YOASOBI's "Idol," the 2023 opening theme for the anime Oshi no Ko, shouldn't have gone viral. The song is deliberately restless—it jumps between glitchy pop, rap, choral moments, and darker territory in under four minutes, with vocalist ikura shifting between voices with theatrical precision. It doesn't fit the neat, repeatable 15-second clips that define TikTok success.

And yet it did exactly that anyway. The track has accumulated over 689 million YouTube views and 588 million Spotify streams, becoming a dance, a cover, an edit, and a challenge—something people encountered online without ever knowing the anime behind it.

But producer Ayase is clear: that virality wasn't engineered. "I don't want to get in a situation where I'm thinking about that with intention," he told Mashable, pushing back against the pressure to build songs around moments designed for clipping and sharing.

Ayase acknowledges the commercial reality in Japan, where TikTok success, dance potential, and meme-ability have become increasingly crucial to a song's performance. He understands the logic. He just doesn't follow it personally.

His approach is about balance. Ayase aims for roughly 60 percent artistic vision to 40 percent commercial consideration. Writing specifically to chase a meme or viral moment, he said, flips that ratio to 30/70—a calculation he's not willing to make. "That's not something that I want to do for the songs that we make," he explained.

It's a striking position for someone leading one of Japan's most internet-native pop acts. YOASOBI itself exists because of the web. Ayase built his early audience uploading Vocaloid songs online; ikura posted covers. Their concept of adapting novels into songs emerged from online platforms and story submissions. Even their latest collaboration, "Orion," draws from Overwatch—a short story about game characters Kiriko, Genji, and Hanzo.

But between those digital roots and their current scale, Ayase has drawn a line. Success on the internet doesn't require sacrificing the art.